Things we can make progress on right now:
- Clearcut the forest in our compound. It's a bad look, and our construction missions mean we now have the needed contacts. Sell the lumber.
- Test our saltmaking method using the water from our hot spring.
- Make an audience room of our compound presentable enough to receive lowly civilian merchants in. Advertise that the Gouketsu are looking for investment opportunities. We don't beat the pavement looking for people, we don't
headhunt. We have
people for that.
- In fact, if we
don't have people for that, that's who we should be recruiting first. Managers, headhunters, advisers. An accountant to do our fucking taxes and a god-damn lawyer to catch weird loopholes! It's already becoming incredibly clear that Hazou needs a P. A. or a Daimyo-equivalent.
Obviously we can't trust
everything to civilian experts, but the number one thing we need right now is
hiring talent, something that right now only
Mari has - and her time is much better spent elsewhere.
- Hire some goddamn gardeners. Ideally including someone with actual skill at identifying medicinal plants, so that they can go "Thaaat is
not a flower I recognize."
- So long as we don't actually
adopt clanless ninja, they're not getting any additional share of the pie; we're just sharing our
existing slice of pie with them. This leaves a
lot of paths open to bribe them to hell and back.
Bribing the Clanless with Seals:
Let's have a look at our sealing licence again, shall we?
Each month, you are allowed to sell:
As many of the following seals as you want, although 50% must be sold at the fixed Tower rate:
- Alarm (Also, you are required to donate 50 of these per month to the Tower. This is a Tower rule, not a Merchant Council rule. The donated tags are distributed to the ninja forces.)
- Explosive tag (As above, but 100 seals.)
So we're allowed to sell as many Alarm seals and Explosive Tags as we want, so long as half of them are sold at the fixed Tower rate.
IIRC, this law is
intended to prevent sealmasters from scalping by enforcing a price floor.
However... according to the letter of this,
for every seal we sell at the Tower rate, we can sell a clanless ninja an explosive tag for 1 Ryo.
In fact,
we can offer a "Buy one, get one for 1 Ryo" deal just for clanless ninja.
This
might be scuppered by the Tower having right of first refusal... but I don't
believe we're required to sell to the Tower at the same price we offer others. IIRC, the Tower purchases at the Tower rate.
It's been said earlier that clanless ninja generally spend their entire equipment allotment on a handful of explosive tags. If they don't
need to spend that money on tags, then they can instead spend that money on
whatever they actually want. This looks good, it doesn't
massively threaten the balance of power, and it also has the nice effect of making Leaf
actually more militarily effective.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, though. Continuing through the contract:
[You may sell...]
As many of the following seals as you want, to anyone, at market rate:
- Party Trick
- Usamatsu's Glorious Life-Saving Purifier
- Air Freshener (probably no market)
- The eight basic Chime seals (probably no market)
- Air Dome
We can sell Air Domes and Purifiers to whoever we want, at "market rate".
@QMs: Does this mean "whatever price we want"? Because issuing Air Domes more generally will no-shit save lives. Hazou would
already be dead if we didn't have Air Dome. Noburi would
also be dead.
Seriously, this just feels like a no-brainer.
- As many storage seals as you want to sell...to civilians, who will then resell them to ninja or hire ninja to activate them. Up to 5 to ninja, and as many as you want to the Tower.
Interesting how this contract assumes that we're not working together with said civilians.
Sell storage seal to civilian for 1 ryo. Civilian turns around and sells it at let's-say-a-quarter-of-market-value to the clanless ninja who just
happened to come in the door.
The clanless ninja owes us a favor, because they just got sold a seal at an astonishingly good price. The civilian owes us a favor, because they just made 1/4 the price of a storage seal for five minutes' work. The Merchant Council
probably doesn't grumble too much, because we're essentially just investing in the civilian merchant. The Tower is likely inclined favorably, because we're equipping loyal Leaf ninja with extra ordnance at a cost of $0 to the Tower. The Gouketsu are only out a few hours of Hazou's time. Only the other clans have cause to complain, and there's
literally nothing to stop any clan with a sealmaster from doing the same exact same thing as us.
In which case we'll see a general drop in the price of seals, which might hurt our personal bottom line a
little... but every single goddamn clanless is going to know that
we're the reason why they could afford that fourth explosive tag that let them not get eaten by a giant chakra snake. If anything, this is an
ideal outcome.
Everybody wins.
On a similar note:
Do the Hagoromo have any land they own that's chakra-beast infested wilderness? Do the Uchiha? Is there
any clan that we can turn a big chunk of worthless sod into productive farmland for, in exchange for
considerations?
